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Grey-headed   /greɪ-hˈɛdəd/   Listen
Grey-headed

adjective
1.
Showing characteristics of age, especially having grey or white hair.  Synonyms: gray, gray-haired, gray-headed, grey, grey-haired, grizzly, hoar, hoary, white-haired.  "Nodded his hoary head"






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"Grey-headed" Quotes from Famous Books



... running to and fro about him. One of them was in a swallow-tail, the second looked like a workman, and the third like a verger. There was also a very lively boy of sixteen. Besides the servants there was present, holding a jug, a reverend, grey-headed monk, who was a little too fat. On one of the tables a huge samovar was boiling, and a tray with almost two dozen glasses was standing near it. On another table opposite offerings had been placed: some loaves and also some pounds of sugar, ...
— The Possessed - or, The Devils • Fyodor Dostoyevsky

... field to strive in. Even when he had fumed away his last coin, and had nothing left in prospective to keep his old age from starvation, hope never forsook him. He still dreamed of ultimate success, and sat down a grey-headed man of eighty, to read over all the authors on the hermetic mysteries, from Geber to his own day, lest he should have misunderstood some process, which it was not yet too late to recommence. The alchymists say, that he succeeded ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds • Charles Mackay

... the watcher, was a grey-headed man, slack in the twist but limber in the joints—distinguished by a constant lowering of the eye and a spasmodic twitching of the corners of the mouth. He was active and nimble, and in moments of excitement much given to spitting Gaelic oaths like ...
— Bog-Myrtle and Peat - Tales Chiefly Of Galloway Gathered From The Years 1889 To 1895 • S.R. Crockett

... great-grandmother's chamber, and no other part of the house was open excepting some kitchen offices, and two or three bedrooms in the roof. The servants consisted of a nurse (herself an old woman), who sat nearly all day in the parlour, because her far more aged mistress required much attendance, a grey-headed housemaid, a cook, and a man, the husband of this last. His chief business was to groom the one horse of the establishment, and ride on it to the nearest town for meat, grocery, ...
— Fated to Be Free • Jean Ingelow

... would go out all alone at the strangest hours, take a fiacre and drive away to the back of the Chartreux or to other remote spots. Alighting there, he would whistle, and a grey-headed old man would advance and give him a packet, or one would be thrown to him from a window, or he would pick up a box filled with despatches, hidden behind a post. I heard of these mysterious doings from people to whom he ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre

... had a playfellow of his own age, and his eagerness to see Alberic de Montemar was great. He watched from the window, and at length beheld Osmond entering the court with a boy of ten years old by his side, and an old grey-headed Squire, with a golden chain to mark him as a Seneschal or Steward ...
— The Little Duke - Richard the Fearless • Charlotte M. Yonge

... altogether disconnected with physical force.[23] From the west came similar stories of violence and trickery. In the West Riding of Halton, the Tories were said to have delayed voting, which seemed to be setting against them, by various stratagems, including the swearing in of old grey-headed men as of 21 years of age, and among the accusations made by the defeated candidate was one that certain deputy returning officers had allowed seven women to vote for the sitting member.[24] On the whole the election went in favour of the governor-general, ...
— British Supremacy & Canadian Self-Government - 1839-1854 • J. L. Morison

... is a conceited, headstrong young train. It will not be guided or advised. The traffic superintendent wants it to go to St. Petersburg or to Paris. The old grey-headed station-master argues with it, and tries to persuade it to go to Constantinople, or even to Jerusalem if it likes that better—urges it to, at all events, make up its mind where it is going—warns it of the danger to young trains of having no fixed aim or object in life. Other people, asked to ...
— Diary of a Pilgrimage • Jerome K. Jerome

... large as it is to see through a brick wall. Small wonder, then, that field naturalists fight rather shy of this family. Of the 110 species of warbler which exist in India, I propose to deal with only one, and that favoured bird is Hodgson's grey-headed flycatcher-warbler (Cryptolopha xanthoschista). My reasons for raising this particular species from among the vulgar herd of warblers are two. The first is that it is the commonest bird in our hill stations. The ...
— Birds of the Indian Hills • Douglas Dewar

... he became deeply pathetic as he referred to the heroic man condemned to death and lying wounded in a Virginia prison; and concluded with an outburst of spiritual triumph like that in Goethe's tragedy of Egmont. "They have brave men in Virginia: it was not an old, grey-headed man entering Harper's Ferry that they were afraid of, it was the John Brown in every man's own ...
— Sketches from Concord and Appledore • Frank Preston Stearns

... pity has desthroyed her raison, poor darlin'," muttered a grey-headed old prisoner named Terry; "lave her alone. We'll take the babe from ...
— Rodman The Boatsteerer And Other Stories - 1898 • Louis Becke

... friends an account who this person was whom I had brought to visit them, and the ground of his visit. He had been a professor of religion from his childhood to his old age (for he was now both grey-headed and elderly), and was a teacher at this time, and had long been so amongst a people, whether Independents or Baptists I do not well remember. And so well thought of he was, for his zeal and honesty, that in those late professing times he was thrust ...
— The History of Thomas Ellwood Written by Himself • Thomas Ellwood

... Rob gravely. "It's an admirable idea, Mariquita, admirable! We'll set to work at once. By means of digging up everything that is in the beds at present, working diligently, and waiting until you are old and grey-headed, there is no reason why you should not attain your ambition in the course of the ...
— More About Peggy • Mrs G. de Horne Vaizey

... fear I shall be grey-headed before I belong to anything else. He makes much of the ancient customs of the country: I would he would follow them. In the good old times I should have been a squire at least by now, if, indeed, I had not earned my spurs; but his lordship will never be content without ...
— St. George and St. Michael • George MacDonald

... the other, whose complexion was contrasted by a snow-white cap, somewhat pointed at the top, which hardly concealed her grizzled hair. She was both exhibiting and admiring in dumb show the telescope so lately in the possession of our friend Robin; while Ned Purcell, a little dumpy, grey-headed mariner, who had heretofore been considered the owner of the best glass in Greenwich, was advancing, glass in hand, to decide which was really the best without farther parley. As Robin was obliged to sing his song twice, we may be ...
— The Buccaneer - A Tale • Mrs. S. C. Hall

... speaker had, in truth, put before them certain noteworthy views of the subject as it affected the poor of London. What attracted Mr. Snowdon's attention was the voice of the speaker who next rose. Pressing a little nearer, he got a glimpse of a lean, haggard, grey-headed man, shabbily dressed, no bad example of a sufferer from the hardships he was beginning to denounce. 'That's old Hewett,' remarked somebody close by. 'He's the feller to let 'em 'ave it!' Yes, it was John Hewett, much older, much more broken, yet much fiercer than when ...
— The Nether World • George Gissing

... saw the funeral procession moving slowly from the house across the grounds, and taking its way towards the village church. The little coffin was carried by four of the grey-headed servants of the house; my uncle and aunt were walking on foot beside it, and my cousin and Henry Lovell were following them. The rest of the servants, among whom was Julia's nurse, and almost all the inhabitants of the village, closed the procession. ...
— Ellen Middleton—A Tale • Georgiana Fullerton

... Dean-street! FIREWORKS will come out shortly, depend upon it, in the dumb line; and will relate her history in profoundly unintelligible motions that will be translated into long and complicated descriptions by a grey-headed father, and a red-wigged countryman, his son. You remember the dumb dodge of relating an escape from captivity? Clasping the left wrist with the right hand, and the right wrist with the left hand—alternately (to express chains)—and then going round and round the stage very ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster

... FOLLOWED BY A BOY WITH WINE. CAR. Come, come, leave these fustian protestations; away, come, I cannot abide these grey-headed ceremonies. Boy, fetch me a glass quickly, I may bid these gentlemen welcome; give them a health here. [EXIT BOY.] I mar'le whose wit it was to put a prologue in yond' sackbut's mouth; they might well think he'd be out of tune, and yet you'd ...
— Every Man Out Of His Humour • Ben Jonson

... of gold, the chaste sheen of silver, the dance and sparkle of light in multitudinous gems, arrested his attention as he one evening perambulated the streets of a great city. He beheld a jeweller's shop. The grey-headed, spectacled lapidary sat at a bench within, sedulously polishing a streaked pebble by the light of a small lamp. A sudden thought struck Otto; he entered the shop, and, presenting the ring to the jeweller, inquired in a tone ...
— The Twilight of the Gods, and Other Tales • Richard Garnett

... heard it, her grey-headed figure straightened, and clasping her two hands above her head, she panted ...
— Debts of Honor • Maurus Jokai

... up in sheer wonder at the lunacy of our dispute and the side he was forcing me to take. Here was I haranguing a grey-headed veteran on his own quarter-deck and exhorting him to valour! In a flash I saw myself befooled, tricked into playing the patronising amateur, complacently posturing for the derision of gods and men. And Captain ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 20 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... fancies and buoyant passions dance in my bosom as in yours; so that when I would persuade you to come with me to the same Saviour, and to walk the rest of your life 'led by the Spirit of God,' I am not persuading you to anything beyond your years. I am not like a grey-headed grandfather,—then you might answer all I say by telling me that you are a boy. No; I am almost as much a boy as you are; as fond of happiness and of life as you are; as fond of scampering over the hills, and seeing all that is to ...
— The Biography of Robert Murray M'Cheyne • Andrew A. Bonar

... riddle might be, Aziel bent towards her to reply, when suddenly round a bend in the path but a few paces from them came a body of soldiers and attendants, headed by a man clad in a white robe and walking with a staff. This man was grey-headed and keen-eyed, thin in face and ascetic in appearance, with a brow of power and a bearing of dignity. At the sight of the pair he halted, looking at them ...
— Elissa • H. Rider Haggard

... on the two following days. Neighbours came, spoke to him, stayed awhile and then departed. The day of the funeral arrived. He stood with the rest at the graveside. It was cold, and the wind laden with snow whistled about him. He heard the grey-headed, white-bearded clergyman read the Burial Service. The words of hope had no meaning for him. An awful feeling of desolation filled his heart as he watched the earth thrown into the grave. A shiver passed through his body, ...
— The Fourth Watch • H. A. Cody

... who is that grey-headed murderer in a tall hat whom I saw shepherding two girls into ...
— The Arrow of Gold - a story between two notes • Joseph Conrad

... a grey-headed tall gaunt figure, who spoke very little; but as the Bosniac frontier is subject to troubles he had been selected for his great personal courage, for he had served under Kara Georg ...
— Servia, Youngest Member of the European Family • Andrew Archibald Paton

... such incomprehensible beings as we must have appeared; and the relation to their comrades of the wonders they had witnessed could not have been to them a whit less marvellous than the tales of the grey-headed Irish peasant, when he recounts the freaks of the fairies, "whose midnight revels by the forest side or fountain" he has watched intently from some ...
— Journals Of Two Expeditions Of Discovery In North-West And Western Australia, Vol. 1 (of 2) • George Grey

... magistrate not believing you, Jones. You are an infernal, grey-headed, mouldy old liar. That yarn is as old as the hills, and since you cannot speak the truth we will go by ourselves," said Hal, coming forward and taking the ...
— Australia Revenged • Boomerang

... in passing through the lanes near here recalls some beliefs of a past generation: 'The faint chimes of St Mary's in distant Ottery are playing their Christmas greeting over many a mile of moorland. We are passing the old "cob" walls and grey-headed barns of a substantial farmstead. The cocks will crow here all the night before Christmas Day, according to the beautiful legend of the ...
— Devon, Its Moorlands, Streams and Coasts • Rosalind Northcote

... hailed with pleasure the return of dawn; and as ghosts and goblins always post off to Erebus when Aurora's flag gilds the mountains, imagined she might now go to sleep in safety. But she was soon roused by the sound of voices, and beheld an indisputable apparition. An aged grey-headed man, bent double, clad in a loose gown, and leaning on a staff, crept out of the very pile which she had been so fearfully contemplating all night. He was attended by a female figure, who carefully seated him ...
— The Loyalists, Vol. 1-3 - An Historical Novel • Jane West

... dark-eyed fellow who was introduced to me as Mr. Lestrade, and who came three or four times in a single week. One morning a young girl called, fashionably dressed, and stayed for half an hour or more. The same afternoon brought a grey-headed, seedy visitor, looking like a Jew pedlar, who appeared to me to be much excited, and who was closely followed by a slip-shod elderly woman. On another occasion an old white-haired gentleman had an interview ...
— A Study In Scarlet • Arthur Conan Doyle

... Grey-headed rocks rose everywhere close about the ship; overhead the seagulls cried and circled; no vegetation was visible on either shore, no houses, no abode of man—nothing but the lighthouses, then miles ...
— The Centaur • Algernon Blackwood

... more favourable account of the music in the village church. In the essay just referred to he mentions the fact that he attended a service in a West of England church where the service 'was spoken—not merely read—by a grey-headed minister.' ...
— Charles Dickens and Music • James T. Lightwood

... much to happen that morning. Behind the old lady's chair marched Potapitch and Martha—Potapitch in his frockcoat and white waistcoat, with a cloak over all, and the forty-year-old and rosy, but slightly grey-headed, Martha in a mobcap, cotton dress, and squeaking shoes. Frequently the old lady would twist herself round to converse with these servants. As for De Griers, he spoke as though he had made up his mind ...
— The Gambler • Fyodor Dostoyevsky

... oak, she still had the dreamy sensation of returning to a life forgotten. The guests, however, were strangers. Mrs. Verdon, in a white silk gown embroidered with bunches of poppies, had never seemed less known. The grey-headed man with the rosy face was Mr. Danforth, and the two auburn-haired young ladies were his daughters, Mary ...
— A Vanished Hand • Sarah Doudney

... greater if the stranger had worn a panther-skin and carried a thyrsus; for the cunning barber had said nothing of the Greek's age or appearance; and among her father's scholarly visitors, she had hardly ever seen any but middle-aged or grey-headed men. There was only one masculine face, at once youthful and beautiful, the image of which remained deeply impressed on her mind: it was that of her brother, who long years ago had taken her on his knee, kissed her, and never come back again: a fair face, with sunny hair, like her own. ...
— Romola • George Eliot

... expect to become rich. If a childless spouse see in a dream children running round the fireside, there is reason to fear the little prattlers will never be there in reality. It is unlucky to dream that a girl has a beard, or that a boy is grey-headed. It is unlucky to dream of a minister, but it is not an evil sign for one to suppose he is worshipping in church. If you dream that a watch or clock falls or is broken, ...
— The Mysteries of All Nations • James Grant

... countess and her daughter were sitting together over the fire, the grey-headed old butler brought in a letter upon an old silver salver, saying, "For Lady Clara, ...
— Castle Richmond • Anthony Trollope

... had cleared the Irish coast, a sullen, grey-headed old wave of the Atlantic climbed leisurely over her straight bows, and sat down on the steam-capstan used for hauling up the anchor. Now the capstan and the engine that drove it had been newly painted red and green; besides which, nobody likes ...
— The Day's Work, Volume 1 • Rudyard Kipling

... addressed a grey-headed man on his left. "Did I ever tell you, Mr.—, how I once enjoyed the hospitality of a Cornish village, through the simple accident of ...
— The White Wolf and Other Fireside Tales • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

... there rose up a grey-headed old chief, and said, "Give this warrior the horn of Gunnar, that we may hear him wind it. I would not say that unless I were sure that he was the right ...
— Havelok The Dane - A Legend of Old Grimsby and Lincoln • Charles Whistler

... Despair. For a while there was confusion all round the pit-mouth, but with a white fixed face and glaring eyes, Lawrie Logan advanced to the very brink, with the rope bound in many firm folds around him, and immediately behind him stood his grey-headed father, unbonneted, just as he had risen from a prayer. "Is't my ain father that's gaun to help me to gang doun to bring up Willie's body? O! merciful God, what a judgment is this! Father—father—Oh! lie doun at some distance awa frae the ...
— Recreations of Christopher North, Volume 2 • John Wilson

... on the other side of the mountain he beheld a castle in the valley, wherein was a river. And he went to the castle; and as he entered it, he saw a hall, and the door of the hall was open, and he went in. And there he saw a lame grey-headed man, sitting on one side of the hall, with Gwalchmai beside him. And Peredur beheld his horse, which the black man had taken, in the same stall with that of Gwalchmai. And they were glad concerning Peredur. And he went and seated himself on the other side of the hoary- headed man. Then, ...
— The Mabinogion Vol. 1 (of 3) • Owen M. Edwards

... sesterces in gold, ready at hand; until at last, at the time he was living in the town of Fundi, the province of Hispania Tarraconensis was offered him. After his arrival in the province, whilst he was sacrificing in a temple, a boy who attended with a censer, became all on a sudden grey-headed. This incident was regarded by some as a token of an approaching revolution in the government, and that an old man would succeed a young one: that is, that he would succeed Nero. And not long after, a thunderbolt falling into a lake in Cantabria [660], twelve axes ...
— The Lives Of The Twelve Caesars, Complete - To Which Are Added, His Lives Of The Grammarians, Rhetoricians, And Poets • C. Suetonius Tranquillus

... Company pessimist, or to the grey-headed sage, the greatest disturbers of this Eden were two Englishmen, Messrs. Buckingham and Coldwell, who, in 1859, entered Red River Colony, and established that organ for good or evil, the newspaper. This first paper was called "The Nor'-Wester." It is amusing to read ...
— The Romantic Settlement of Lord Selkirk's Colonists - The Pioneers of Manitoba • George Bryce

... of the Opera arrived at Court part of the suite of the young Archduchess, the betrothed of the Crown Prince of Reisenburg. These consisted of an old grey-headed General, who had taught her Imperial Highness the manual exercise; and her tutor and confessor, an ancient and toothless Bishop. Their youthful mistress was to follow them in a few days; and this ...
— Vivian Grey • The Earl of Beaconsfield

... three loads, and I had four "pull-a-boys," one a Mpongwe, Mwaka alias Captain Merrick, a model sluggard; and Messrs. Smoke, Joe Williams, and Tom Whistle- -Kru-men, called Kru-boys. This is not upon the principle, as some suppose, of the grey-headed post-boy and drummer-boy: all the Kraoh tribes end their names in bo, e.g. Worebo, from "wore," to capsize a canoe; Grebo, from the monkey "gre" or "gle;" and many others. Bo became "boy," even as Sipahi (Sepoy) became Sea- pie, ...
— Two Trips to Gorilla Land and the Cataracts of the Congo Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton

... left him, to return a few minutes later with grey-headed old Kanka, who in response to an inquiring look from his master, bent ...
— By Rock and Pool on an Austral Shore, and Other Stories • Louis Becke

... came out to open the cab-door. He was followed by Mr. Gallilee, eager to help the person inside to alight. The traveller proved to be a grey-headed woman, shabbily dressed. Mr. Gallilee cordially shook hands with her—patted her on the shoulder—gave her his arm—led her into the house. The cab with the luggage on it remained at the door. The nurse had evidently not reached the end ...
— Heart and Science - A Story of the Present Time • Wilkie Collins

... .... The old grey-headed party who lost his life last Friday at the jewelled hands of our wife, deserves more than a passing notice at ours. He came to this city last summer, and started a weekly Methodist prayer meeting, but ...
— The Fiend's Delight • Dod Grile

... of life. They therefore naturally looked with admiration upon Cato, observing that while they became enervated by pleasures and broke down under labours, he on the other hand seemed unaffected by either, and that too, not only while he was young and eager for fame: but even when he was an old grey-headed man, after he had been consul and had triumphed, he yet, like a victorious athlete, still kept himself in training, and never relaxed his severe discipline. He himself tells us that he never wore a garment worth more than a hundred drachmas, ...
— Plutarch's Lives, Volume II • Aubrey Stewart & George Long

... was the cause of her being sold, acted as salesman, and bill of saleman. While this cruel business was being transacted, my master stood aside, and the girl's father, a pious member and exhorter in the Methodist Church, a venerable grey-headed man, with his hat off, besought that he might be allowed to get some one in the place to purchase his child. But no; my master was invincible. His reply was, "She has offended in my family, and I can only restore confidence by sending her out of hearing." After ...
— The Fugitive Blacksmith - or, Events in the History of James W. C. Pennington • James W. C. Pennington

... patrons, the Maratha, chiefs. Here I found an old native pensioner, above a hundred years of age. He had fought under Lord Clive at the battle of Plassey, A.D. 1757, and was still a very cheerful, talkative old gentleman, though he had long lost the use of his eyes. One of his sons, a grey-headed old man, and a Subadar (captain) in a regiment of native infantry, had been at the taking of Java,[5] and was now come home on leave to visit his father. Other sons had risen to the rank of commissioned officers, and their families ...
— Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official • William Sleeman

... she turned away and took her father's arm. The two men watched them disappear—the little grey-headed man with his ill-cut clothes, and hard, shrewd face, and the tall, graceful girl, whose toilette was irreproachable, and whose carriage and bearing moved even Reist to admiration. They passed down the ...
— The Traitors • E. Phillips (Edward Phillips) Oppenheim

... pursuits. We were, if I remember right, in the vicinity of a place called Hythe, in Kent. One sweet evening, in the latter part of summer, our mother took her two little boys by the hand, for a wander about the fields. In the course of our stroll we came to the village church; an old grey-headed sexton stood in the porch, who, perceiving that we were strangers, invited us to enter. We were presently in the interior, wandering about the aisles, looking on the walls, and inspecting the monuments of the notable dead. I can scarcely state what we saw; ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow

... air, and the inevitable frock-coat. They bow gravely to each other, and seat themselves at separate tables. As often as not they produce books or newspapers, and read during the solemn meal. It is as well to watch these men and take note of them. Many of them are grey-headed. No one of them is young. But they are beginners, mere apprentices, at a very difficult trade, and in the days to come they will have the making of the history of Europe. For these men are attaches and ...
— Roden's Corner • Henry Seton Merriman

... Hanover Square, I saw a grey-headed negro, who was for turning a penny before he engaged in the amusements of the day, carrying two pails that were scoured to the neatness of Dutch fastidiousness, and which were suspended from the ...
— Satanstoe • James Fenimore Cooper

... motionless with surprise, the old cheat saluted the forty grey-headed men round the fire: Devout adorers of fire, said he, this is a happy day for us! ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments Volume 1 • Anonymous

... right sat a grey-headed man with worn face and wolfish eyes, who might have been expected to take this as a hint to make way. But he never heard a word. All his sense was concentrated on the board before him, and his only motion was to bend more closely and eagerly over the play. Tom whispered ...
— Dead Man's Rock • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

... her,' declared a grey-headed man saved from great depths, whose tottering steps she taught to walk the way to ...
— The Angel Adjutant of "Twice Born Men" • Minnie L. Carpenter

... she took up her dog in her arms again, and stood gazing silently up at the window above, through which the setting sun was sending coloured rays in all directions. Then with a little sigh she turned and left the church. Outside the porch was a grey-headed old man, the sexton, who was taking his evening ...
— Odd • Amy Le Feuvre

... I saw suggested that perhaps I was dead after all and had reached that hell which a certain class of earnest Christian promises to us as the reward of the failings that Nature and those who begat us have handed on to us as a birth doom. It was something unnatural, grey-headed, terrific—doubtless a devil come to torment me in the inquisition vaults of Hades. Yet I had known the like when I was alive. How had it been called? I remembered, "The-thing-that-never-should-have-been-born." Hark! It was speaking in that full deep voice which ...
— Finished • H. Rider Haggard

... it these two hours," said a grey-headed gentleman, speaking without taking his eyes off the newspaper. "There is a ...
— Sybil - or the Two Nations • Benjamin Disraeli

... on the highroad, one was grey-headed and clean-shaven, and wore a German peaked cap, the other young and tall, with a beard and a Polish cap. A two-horse vehicle was drawn up a ...
— Selected Polish Tales • Various

... a good deal of kissing and embracing went on. One old grey-headed gentleman was constantly walking up to the cabinet and being embraced by a white figure, whose arms we could just see, thrown round his neck, in the dim light. (I note that the light here was much less than with Mrs Stoddart Gray in ...
— Seen and Unseen • E. Katharine Bates

... the counting-room late one evening. Loud voices had halted me as I passed the door. Mr Greeley stood back of the counter; a rather tall, wiry grey-headed man before it. Each was shaking a right fist under the other's nose. They were shouting loudly as they argued. The stranger was for war; Mr Greeley for waiting. The publisher of the Tribune stood beside the latter, smoking ...
— Eben Holden - A Tale of the North Country • Irving Bacheller

... his feet with tears still glistening in his eyes. He saw before him a bent, grey-headed man looking at him lovingly and wistfully. Joey knew who it was—the father he had never seen. With a glad cry of welcome he sprang into the outstretched arms of the man whom his love had already won ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1905 to 1906 • Lucy Maud Montgomery

... more merciful by falling into the hands of my God than into the hands of my enemies. My danger was so great that I forgot the danger of others; besides, sir, I knew my comrades were soldiers, and feared death as little as I do." My answer pleased the fine grey-headed general, and he gave me a recommendation to the ...
— The Life and Adventures of Baron Trenck - Vol. 1 (of 2) • Baron Trenck

... grey-headed chaplain, took the Highlander affectionately by the second button of his tunic and gave it a pull. "Not much space here, eh? I think you're pretty ...
— Leaves from a Field Note-Book • J. H. Morgan

... Peter Stuyvesant, and if my admiration of him has on this occasion transported my style beyond the sober gravity which becomes the philosophic recorder of historic events, I must plead as an apology that though a little grey-headed Dutchman, arrived almost at the down-hill of life, I still retain a lingering spark of that fire which kindles in the eye of youth when contemplating the virtues of ancient worthies. Blessed thrice, and nine times blessed be the good St. Nicholas, if I have indeed escaped ...
— Knickerbocker's History of New York, Complete • Washington Irving

... a holy Thursday, their innocent faces clean, The children walking two and two, in red, and blue, and green: Grey-headed beadles walked before, with wands as white as snow, Till into the high dome of Paul's ...
— Songs of Innocence and Songs of Experience • William Blake

... went our bold lover; all alone, or rather with Love for his companion; and so, riding hard till he came to the Red Sea, he took ship, and journeyed through Egypt, and came to the mountains of Barca, where he overtook an old grey-headed palmer. ...
— Stories from the Italian Poets: With Lives of the Writers, Vol. 2 • Leigh Hunt

... was sufficiently restored to enable her to distinguish objects dimly. Of the three persons who had offered themselves to view on the right-hand side of the door, one (Mrs. Finch) was a woman; another (Mr. Finch) was a short, grey-headed, elderly man; the third (Nugent), in his height—which she could see—and in the color of his hair—which she could see-was the only one of the three who could possibly represent Oscar. The catastrophe that followed was (as things were) inevitable. ...
— Poor Miss Finch • Wilkie Collins

... not raise her eyes; but suddenly she started, and passed over the rows of spectators a glance intent, but not attentive, absorbed, it seemed, in herself.... 'What tragic eyes she has!' observed a man sitting behind Aratov, a grey-headed dandy with the face of a Revel harlot, well known in Moscow as a prying gossip and writer for the papers. The dandy was an idiot, and meant to say something idiotic ... but he spoke the truth. Aratov, who from the very moment of Clara's entrance had never taken ...
— Dream Tales and Prose Poems • Ivan Turgenev

... been attached from his infancy. He had often made excursions to it when a boy, and the impressions of delight given to his mind by the homely kindness of the grey-headed peasant, to whom it was intrusted, and whose fruit and cream never failed, had not been obliterated by succeeding circumstances. The green pastures along which he had so often bounded in the exultation of health, and youthful freedom—the woods, under whose refreshing shade he had first indulged ...
— The Mysteries of Udolpho • Ann Radcliffe

... went to church; the priest was reading from Holy Scripture, and so he needs must listen. Now there were certain words there which pleased him not. "To say such words to me!" thought he, "words that I can never forget, though I grow grey-headed." After service the Tsar went home, and bade them send the priest to him. The priest came. "How durst thou read such and such passages to me?" said the Tsar.—"They were written to be read," replied the priest.—"Written, indeed! ...
— Cossack Fairy Tales and Folk Tales • Anonymous

... saw her being whipped across the eyes, right in the eyes! He was crying, he felt choking, his tears were streaming. One of the men gave him a cut with the whip across the face, he did not feel it. Wringing his hands and screaming, he rushed up to the grey-headed old man with the grey beard, who was shaking his head in disapproval. One woman seized him by the hand and would have taken him away, but he tore himself from her and ran back to the mare. She was almost at the last gasp, but began kicking ...
— Crime and Punishment • Fyodor Dostoyevsky

... the old grey-headed clerk who fussed about with papers. Signor Malipizzo, after a deferential but dignified bow to the famous lawyer, had taken his seat on the raised platform facing the public whence he was wont to dispense justice. Nailed against the wall, directly over his head, was ...
— South Wind • Norman Douglas

... will give me great, deep lines in the forehead; and last of all, you will do vulgar things, that will make my mouth get into the 'don't' shape, which is so ugly, you know; and, by and by, when I look at myself in the glass, I shall find myself turned into a grey-headed old woman, and I shall say, 'Sissy gave me those wrinkles between my eyes, I always had to frown at her so;' and then, 'Those ugly lines by my mouth came when Lottie vexed me so.' What a funny thing it will be to have to remember you in that way ...
— My Young Days • Anonymous

... His hearers saw these things every day. Perhaps they were in view as He spoke. Finally, the less hackneyed our illustrations are, the better. If this were more generally remembered we would miss, and that with a sense of relief, a few grey-headed similes which, having haunted our youth, threaten to haunt also our age; and which have assailed us so often as to create the kind of familiarity that breeds contempt. In how many Sunday school addresses—and a Sunday school address is preaching in a way—in how many such addresses have we ...
— The Message and the Man: - Some Essentials of Effective Preaching • J. Dodd Jackson

... same time, to make a more thorough examination of our haven, generally. The request being granted, we got into the yawl, with four men, all of us armed, and set out on our little expedition. Smudge, a withered, grey-headed old Indian, with muscles however that resembled whip-cord, was alone on deck, when this movement took place. He watched our proceedings narrowly, and, when he saw us descend into the boat, he very coolly slipped down the ship's side, and ...
— Afloat And Ashore • James Fenimore Cooper

... vivacity of his eye, which, as they entered, first followed Master Mumblazen slowly to a large oaken desk, on which a ponderous volume lay open, and then rested, as if in uncertainty, on the stranger who had entered along with him. The curate, a grey-headed clergyman, who had been a confessor in the days of Queen Mary, sat with a book in his hand in another recess in the apartment. He, too, signed a mournful greeting to Tressilian, and laid his book aside, to watch the ...
— Kenilworth • Sir Walter Scott

... and the fish will take it, Mr Cleversides; but not if they see a big lubberly boy staring at them with his arm in a sling, or an old grey-headed man, either, Ralph. There, don't frown. It's very nice to be a big lubberly boy; much better than being a worn-out old man, with not much longer to live. Ah, you laugh at my bumble-bee, and it certainly is not like one, but the best I can do, and I find it a great bait for a chevin, if used ...
— The Black Tor - A Tale of the Reign of James the First • George Manville Fenn

... an old grey-headed statesman, who had contrived, by shifting and trimming, to maintain his post at the steerage through all the changes of course which the vessel had held for thirty years, "I thought Sir William would hae verified the auld Scottish saying, 'As soon ...
— Bride of Lammermoor • Sir Walter Scott

... of persons, to whom compassion should secure more than common indulgence, determined us to purchase these worst sort of slaves, and in this place we have five who owed their wretchedness to being only three foot high, one grey-headed toothless old man of sixteen years of age, a woman of about seven foot in height, and a man who would be still taller, if the extreme weakness of his body, and the wretched life he for some time led, in the hands ...
— A Description of Millenium Hall • Sarah Scott

... along the mountain, and on the other side of the mountain he beheld a castle in the valley, wherein was a river. And he went to the castle; and as he entered it, he saw a hall, and the door of the hall was open, and he went in. And there he saw a lame grey-headed man sitting on one side of the hall, with Gwalchmai beside him. And Peredur beheld his horse, which the black man had taken, in the same stall with that of Gwalchmai. And they were glad concerning Peredur. And he went ...
— The Mabinogion • Lady Charlotte Guest

... Others to a Citie strong Lay Siege, encampt; by Batterie, Scale, and Mine, Assaulting; others from the Wall defend With Dart and Jav'lin, Stones and sulfurous Fire; On each hand slaughter and gigantic deeds. In other part the scepter'd Haralds call To Council in the Citie Gates: anon Grey-headed men and grave, with Warriours mixt, Assemble, and Harangues are heard, but soon In factious opposition, till at last 660 Of middle Age one rising, eminent In wise deport, spake much of Right and ...
— The Poetical Works of John Milton • John Milton

... had it been more musical, and who talked of athletic sports with a young man evidently better fitted to excel in that kind of thing than in any pursuit demanding intelligence. This gentleman Christian had never met. The two other callers, a grey-headed, military-looking person, and a lady, possibly his wife, ...
— Born in Exile • George Gissing

... and upon his arrival was at once ushered into a private room. There was but one individual in the apartment, a tall, handsome, grey-headed old gentleman of most aristocratic appearance, who rose to his feet in much agitation ...
— Dick Leslie's Luck - A Story of Shipwreck and Adventure • Harry Collingwood

... being put in a coaster; which we might run away with. At all events, any chance seemed better to us, than that of remaining in prison, until the end of war that might last years, or until we got to be grey-headed. I remembered, when the Ville de Milan was brought into Halifax; this was a year, or two, before I went to sea; and yet here were some of her people still, on ...
— Ned Myers • James Fenimore Cooper

... Solomon's Proverbs in Parchment, it teaches Wisdom, and it is gilded, because Gold is a Symbol of Wisdom. This shall be given to our grey-headed Timothy; that according to the Doctrine of the Gospel, to him that has Wisdom, Wisdom shall ...
— Colloquies of Erasmus, Volume I. • Erasmus

... clear in him through all the weary years of unjust imprisonment; and when he was a grey-headed old man, the base son of a bad mother used it to betray him. The success of his last enterprise was made the condition under which he was to be pardoned for a crime which he had not committed; and its success depended, as he knew, ...
— Froude's Essays in Literature and History - With Introduction by Hilaire Belloc • James Froude

... 'Grey-headed Shepherd, thou hast spoken well; Small difference lies between thy creed and mine. This beast not unobserved by Nature fell; His death was ...
— The Children's Garland from the Best Poets • Various

... chance of dat!" observed one of our captors, a grey-headed old negro with a facetious countenance, looking at the numerous lashings which ...
— Old Jack • W.H.G. Kingston

... time, Khem Singh knocked at the wicket-gate of the Fort and walked to the Captain and the Subaltern, who were nearly grey-headed on account of correspondence that daily arrived ...
— Indian Tales • Rudyard Kipling

... the revolt were in the house, and that their horses were before the door. A couple of men and two or three boys soon hurried round, and Peter was relieved from his charge, and courteously led into the servants' hall by Momont, the grey-headed old butler and favourite servant of the Marquis, and Jacques Chapeau, the valet, groom, and confidential factotum of Larochejaquelin. Peter was soon encouraged to tell his tale, and to explain the mission which had brought ...
— La Vendee • Anthony Trollope

... wary grey-headed ex-pounder of wisdom than like the hot-headed Gaetano Grimaldi of old!" exclaimed the baron, though he laughed while uttering the words, as if he felt, at least a portion of the other's indifference to those exaggerated feelings that had entered ...
— The Headsman - The Abbaye des Vignerons • James Fenimore Cooper

... to be a grey-headed form of the last species, but with larger ears; the head is iron grey; round the eyes and a patch above and below orange fulvous or chestnut; the base of the ears the same. Regarding this Dr. Anderson, on comparing it with the last, writes: ...
— Natural History of the Mammalia of India and Ceylon • Robert A. Sterndale

... hanged in Bishopsgate Street, whose aged grey-headed father waited for him at the gallows, kissed him at its foot when he arrived, and sat there, on the ground, till they took him down. They would have given him the body of his child; but he had no hearse, no coffin, nothing to remove ...
— Barnaby Rudge • Charles Dickens

... nothing but alarm and perplexity. She drew herself away from him. The chaperone, a little grey-headed woman with mobile features, leant forward to intervene. Her resolute bright eyes examined Denton. "What do ...
— Tales of Space and Time • Herbert George Wells

... than leave her; but the more reluctance she showed, the more determined was Perronel, and she could not but submit to her fate, only adding one more entreaty that she might take her jackdaw, which was now a spruce grey-headed bird. Perronel said it would be presumption in a waiting-woman, but Ambrose declared that at Chelsea there were all manner of beasts and birds, beloved by the children and by their father himself, and that he believed ...
— The Armourer's Prentices • Charlotte Mary Yonge

... beloved by all about him, his Servants never care for leaving him; by this means his Domesticks are all in Years, and grown old with their Master. You would take his Valet de Chambre for his Brother, his Butler is grey-headed, his Groom is one of the gravest Men that I have ever seen, and his Coachman has the Looks of a Privy-Counsellor. You see the Goodness of the Master even in the old House-dog, and in a grey Pad that is kept in ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele

... was going away, but the Princess held him back, and said: "Trouble me not with your prate, old man, nor mock my grief; I know Bova Korolevich; he is young and handsome, but you are old and grey-headed." ...
— The Russian Garland - being Russian Falk Tales • Various

... decreased a thousandfold, our length of life, based upon perception of events, would be no longer than 25-1/2 of our present days; if our life were actually reduced to that period (so as to regain our present units of perception) we should be old and grey-headed before the sun had risen for the twenty-fifth time since our birth. If our unit of perception, with our length of life, were again reduced a thousandfold, the whole of our life of seventy years would now only be equal to forty-three minutes, and, in the whole ...
— Science and the Infinite - or Through a Window in the Blank Wall • Sydney T. Klein

... entered with the mail-bag. Miss Lucy, laying down her knitting, took it from him with eager fingers. Place a la poste—in eighteen hundred and sixty-one! She untied the string, emptied letters and papers upon the table beside her, and began to sort them. Julius, a spare and venerable piece of grey-headed ebony, an autocrat of exquisite manners and great family pride, stood back a ...
— The Long Roll • Mary Johnston

... us at a little convent with a chapel and two houses standing close to the water's edge; and at Novaglia we took on board a party of emigrants, some of whom were quite boys, while one was grey-headed. Most of them wore the picturesque costume of the Morlacchi; but the next day we saw them again, clad in the characterless, sack-like slop-suit which seems to be thought a mark of civilisation, having lost much of their individuality without gaining anything ...
— The Shores of the Adriatic - The Austrian Side, The Kuestenlande, Istria, and Dalmatia • F. Hamilton Jackson

... religious fervor had done for the young man what a lifetime of political scheming had failed to do for many a grey-headed disappointed adventurer. Then, as in all ages, intrigue regarded the success of sincerity with astonishment.—The Master of the Magicians, by Elizabeth Stuart Phelps and ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama, Vol 1 - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook • The Rev. E. Cobham Brewer, LL.D.

... the cry, Leonard did not halt till he reached the great western door of the cathedral, against which he knocked. His first summons remaining unanswered, he repeated it, and a wicket was then opened by a grey-headed verger, with a lantern in his hand, who at first was very angry at being disturbed; but on learning whom the applicant was in search of, and that the case was one of urgent necessity, he admitted that the doctor was in the cathedral ...
— Old Saint Paul's - A Tale of the Plague and the Fire • William Harrison Ainsworth

... a tour of the district, when the building was going on, and shall endeavour to describe a small part of what met my eye on that occasion. In one locality (and this was a specimen of the rest) I saw fourteen different squads of masons at work, with the natives attending them. Old grey-headed men, worn down by previous hardship and present want, were to be seen carrying stones, and wheeling them and other materials on barrows, or conveying them on their backs to the buildings, and with their tottering limbs and trembling ...
— Leading Articles on Various Subjects • Hugh Miller

... Grey-headed men, wonderfully pathetic in their dissipation, stared at her through clouds. Smooth-cheeked boys, some of them with faces of stone and mouths of sin, not nearly so pathetic as the grey heads, tried to find the girl's eyes in the smoke wreaths. Maggie considered she was ...
— Maggie: A Girl of the Streets • Stephen Crane

... sudden impulse. His grey-headed mate, a first-rate sailor and a nice old chap with strangers, but in his relations with his commander the surliest chief officer I've ever seen, would tell the story with tears in his eyes. It appears that when he ...
— Lord Jim • Joseph Conrad

... the grown people of Deerbrook telling their little ones all about the pestilence that swept the place at the end of the great scarcity, when they were children, you and yours, and perhaps I, may sit, a knot of grey-headed friends, and hear over again about those good old days of ours, as we ...
— Deerbrook • Harriet Martineau

... Pastor Tappau could have been supposed to entertain so evil a passion. However that might be, two parties were speedily formed, the younger and more ardent being in favour of Mr. Nolan, the elder and more persistent—and, at the time, the more numerous—clinging to the old grey-headed, dogmatic Mr. Tappau, who had married them, baptized their children, and was to them literally as a 'pillar of the church.' So Mr. Nolan left Salem, carrying away with him, possibly, more hearts than that of Faith Hickson's; but certainly ...
— Curious, if True - Strange Tales • Elizabeth Gaskell

... the grey-headed stockbroker, "there disengages itself from the totality of the facts an impression, tolerably clear, that all goes very well on the ...
— Over There • Arnold Bennett

... agent may have almost anything he demands, short of possession of the farm and the home of the tenant. The notice to quit is like a death warrant to the family. It makes every member of it tremble and agonise, from the grey-headed grandfather and grandmother, to the bright little children, who read the advent of some impending calamity in the gloomy countenances and bitter words of their parents. The passion for the possession ...
— The Land-War In Ireland (1870) - A History For The Times • James Godkin

... and schoolfellows. Such things as these, their young minds may apprehend, feel, and apply, and thus be strengthened and benefitted, but scholastic subtelties, and controverted dogmas, such as the grey-headed are perpetually disputing about, surely should never be taught to infants by any one who has carefully considered the subject, and properly studied the nature of the ...
— The Infant System - For Developing the Intellectual and Moral Powers of all Children, - from One to Seven years of Age • Samuel Wilderspin

... Baron of Attinghausen. A Gothic Hall, decorated with escutcheons and helmets. The Baron, a grey-headed man, eighty- five years old, tall and of a commanding mien, clad in a furred pelisse, and leaning on a staff tipped with chamois horn. Kuoni and six hinds standing round him with rakes and scythes. Ulrich of Rudenz enters in ...
— Wilhelm Tell - Title: William Tell • Johann Christoph Friedrich von Schiller

... genius in the teacher. Education, like most other things, was everywhere at its nadir, and Giggleswick was no exception. In the whole of Ingram's time as Headmaster—43 years—he had three Ushers. One was mad, one died after four years, and one—John Howson—grew grey-headed with the work. He had during the same period three Writing Masters, of whom one was most cantankerous, another stayed twenty-four years, and the third—John Langhorne—was not wholly a success. He managed the School Accounts from 1839-1845, but they were ...
— A History of Giggleswick School - From its Foundation 1499 to 1912 • Edward Allen Bell

... Holy Thursday, their innocent faces clean, Came children walking two and two, in red and blue and green; Grey-headed beadles walked before, with wands as white as snow, Till into the high dome of Paul's they like Thames' ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury

... and to all the long-suffering, patience, and pardoning mercy which thy aged servant has experienced through her sinful guilty pilgrimage. Thou hast forgiven me all the way from Egypt. Leave me not now, when I am old and grey-headed; but when strength and heart fail, be thou the strength of my heart and portion ...
— The Power of Faith - Exemplified In The Life And Writings Of The Late Mrs. Isabella Graham. • Isabella Graham

... a native boy to travel with us and look after the luggage, as it is difficult to do without one in India. All servants are called "boys" here, even if they are grey-headed; our man is probably about five-and-twenty. He is called Ramaswamy, and has a chocolate-coloured moon-face with big round eyes; I think he is intelligent though he looks stupid. He is dressed in spotless white, his ...
— Round the Wonderful World • G. E. Mitton

... Burley, "I have since had proof, of the strongest nature, that such a report was spread in the garrison by that wily and grey-headed malignant, partly to prevail on the soldiers to submit to a diminution of their daily food, partly to detain us before the walls of his fortress until the sword should be whetted to smite ...
— Old Mortality, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott

... have honoured its festivities with their presence and patronage. Pen looked about, on his first introduction, not a little amused with the scene which he witnessed. Among his comrades of the student class there were gentlemen of all ages, from sixty to seventeen; stout grey-headed attorneys who were proceeding to take the superior dignity,—dandies and men—about town who wished for some reason to be barristers of seven years' standing,—swarthy, black-eyed natives of the Colonies, who came to be called ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray

... the evening passed, not long nor tediously to any of the party; and midnight was at hand; when there entered from the atrium a grey-headed slave bearing a tray covered with light refreshments—fresh herbs, endive and mallows sprinkled with snow, ripe figs, eggs and anchovies, dried grapes, and cakes of candied honey; while two boys of rare beauty followed, one carrying a flagon of Chian wine diluted with snow water, the other ...
— The Roman Traitor (Vol. 1 of 2) • Henry William Herbert



Words linked to "Grey-headed" :   old



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